Jug

This jug has a globular body, a flat base and a narrow mouth. A tube-like spout emerges from near the base and is connected to the shoulder of the jug by a loop handle, large enough for a single finger. The jug is made from a red-brown clay, and has been burnished. It was likely made on a wheel with the spout added later.

This jug was excavated at Tepe Sialk, near Kashan in central Iran. Sialk was the site of a fortified town, constructed in the early first millennium B.C. Several hundred yards from the town there was a large cemetery, called Necropolis B by the archaeologists who explored it between 1933 and 1937. The graves were pits covered with pitched roofs made of stone or clay, and in addition to the bodies of the dead they contained jewelry, weapons, leather armor, horse trappings and ceramic vessels, including many similar jugs. The jug’s function is unclear. It is too small to have been used as a serving vessel. Possibly it was used in a funerary ritual before it was placed in the grave.